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Beyond Telluride

Editor's note: Tracy Shaffer continues her insider's look at our sister city, Denver. This post is an obituary, sorta, but a hopeful one.

Denver theatre closes a door…

by Tracy Shaffer

I have a feeling except for my inner circle, most of the people who know me will learn of my death on Facebook. That's how I hear of demise these days.

This week the Denver Center Theatre rang the death knell for the National Theatre Conservatory, announcing its closing after the class of 2012 graduates. The Denver community is stunned and angry, begs for answers, yet the optimist in me believes a rebirth is at hand. Perhaps, I tell myself, this "death" is like the death of the legendary Phoenix: a new and improved NTC will rise from the ashes.

Created in 1984, the NTC was the baby of former Denver Center artistic Director Donovan Marley, whose vision for sustaining the future of the theatre involved impeccable training of its actors. The three-year, tuition-free MFA program brought much to the nascent theatre company, raising its national profile and prestige. The bright young students got to work within the Acting Company during their third year to accrue union credits toward equity cards. Mentored by senior company members, they kept us all young and connected to the reasons we began our own journeys in to the acting profession. The impact of the talented alumni on the Denver theatre community and far beyond is quite impressive: NTC students grace the Broadway stages and national touring productions and star in TV shows. More than a few have started thriving theatre companies of their own.

28 February, 2010 /
Unknown The Telluride AIDS Benefit has grown every year since its grassrootsy beginning in 1994. And since that first year, the Western Colorado AIDS Project has been the event's primary recipient, because the Benefit's muse, Robert Presley, determined to keep WestCAP, his medical provider in time of need, healthy. TAB's generosity, however, extends way beyond WestCAP all the way to Africa, with stops along the way on the Front Range, home to the Denver Children's Hospital Immunodeficiency Program or CHIP.

CHIP began providing specialized care for HIV+ children in the Rocky Mountain region in 1991. CHIP remains the only entity in the region providing comprehensive, coordinated, family-centered services to infants, children, youth (13-24), pregnant women, and parents of HIV-infected children.
25 February, 2010 /

Telluride local Ben Clark with friends Jon Miller and Josh Butson were in Nepal in the Spring of 2009. Ben has sent along another video installment documenting their journey.In this episode our intrepid travelers spend 17 days, much of the time in hot,...

23 February, 2010 /

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Kevin Rucker

Denver is Telluride Inside... and Out's home away from home, so last weekend we decided to get an up close and personal look at the oldest part of the city.

LoDo is the handle Denverites assigned to the Lower Downtown Historic District, located just northwest of Downtown Denver near the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. LoDo, the original settlement of the city, is now a mixed-used neighborhood known for its vibrant nightlife with 70+ bars and restaurants – and at least as many ghosts. More later.

College history instructor Kevin Rucker is a descendant of Puritan settlers. His grandma, a hardcore genealogist, hooked him into an exploration of the past. Dressed in uniform, a paisley vest and bowler hat, the man cuts as colorful a figure as the miscreants and madams he describes on his spirited walking tour. (We are talking the liquid and supernatural variety.)

23 February, 2010 /

by Ben Clark

Ice Fest 2010 033 Flying into Marquette, MI late on a Thursday night in February was about as exotic as my life could get. I'm a climber from Colorado and heard there was ice here, in the cold and windswept upper peninsula. Not just normal ice of course, ice that had drawn climbers to the region for a climbing festival running into its 26th year. Really???

For all the promise of cold, it was the warmth of the locals that made the trip so worthwhile. Heading out to Sand Point on Friday with Rep Bryan Kuhn and his friends, I was treated to thunker swings in a savory pillar of steep waterfall ice. We shared it with several locals, looking to experience the privacy that makes ice climbing so cherished in this region about to be inundated by weekend festivities. I was psyched to be there and happy to be surrounded by such nice people.

22 February, 2010 /

Mrs Robinson Fox
Tracy Shaffer as Mrs. Robinson

Editor's note: Telluride Inside...and Out now has a regular Denver contributor, Tracy Shaffer, for readers who may want a big city fix. Tracy is an abundantly talented playwright and well-known actress around the Mile High City, currently starring as the original coyote, Mrs. Robinson, in "The Graduate," which we got to see last Saturday (February 13). White hot always cool Tracy, not Benjamin, was the show's center of gravity, its heft and its raison d'etre. In a sleek production with minimal sets, the other rest of the cast became props to set off Mrs. Robinson's aria. The director, John Ashton, seemed to have pushed everyone else over the top to create cultural stereotypes of the 1960s  – The Successful, Golf-Playing Dutiful Dad; the Well-Intentioned, Hysterical Mom; the Rebellious Son. These contemporary riffs on Chaucer's archetypes allow the story of a complex woman's complex relationship with her daughter to emerge with greater understanding. Denver Post critic John Moore saw it differently: he saw underwear. We see his perspective as the emperor's new clothes, which Tracy describes in her  "Naked Truth."

My Naked Truth: Sex, power and ticket sales

by Tracy Shaffer

Much ado about wearing nothing in the Aurora Fox Theatre’s production of "The Graduate." In his Sunday column, Denver Post theatre critic John Moore took the Fox to task for "copping out" and clothing the star (though scantily) to suit its subscribers. The conversation was off and running.

17 February, 2010 /

As Telluride looks to a more sustainable future, is every old model new again?

Zermatt On February 10, 6 p.m., The Telluride Historical Museum presents a lively, invitation only, slide show illustrating the unprecedented 1979 investigation of the gold standard for mountain communities: Zermatt, Switzerland.

In 1978  the Idarado mine, the last dynamic link between the mining town that was and the resort town yet to be, shut down. The ski company had changed hands:  Ron Allred became the new Joe Zoline and the county planning process for Mountain Village got underway.

Telluride was a-changin,' but into what was still blowing in the wind.

08 February, 2010 /
[click "Play" to listen to MD about his art]

Md_web The Telluride local known on the streets simply as "MD" is not what his handle suggests. Michael Patrick Doherty is an artist, this month the featured virtuoso at the Ah Haa School for the Arts. "Life on Telluride" officially opens tomorrow, February 4, for the First Thursday Art Walk., 5 - 8 p.m. in Ah Haa's Daniel Tucker Gallery.


03 February, 2010 /

Telluride local Ben Clark takes Telluride on the road every spring, doing what Telluriders often do: Get out there on the edge. This is the second post in a series linking to Ben's adventures in the Himalayas. View the website and check out the video...

02 February, 2010 /